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Omaze Democratizes Charity Auctions for VIP Experiences

The online charity auction is nothing new. Sites like Charitybuzz and eBay Celebrity — founded in 2005 and 2011, respectively — offer chances to win unique experiences in order to support great causes. The problem, like with most auctions, is that the prize goes to the highest bidder, and some people are willing to dish out tens of thousands of dollars — a lot more than the average person can afford.

Instead of offering once-in-a-lifetime experiences to wealthy donors through a typical auction, Omaze offers everyone the opportunity to participate, and all it takes is a $5 or $10 donation. The result is a raffle-like format in which everyone has an equal chance of meeting actors, musicians, athletes and leaders around the world, raising money and awareness at the same time.

Here's how it works: You go to Omaze and choose a dream experience, such as going behind the scenes of The Colbert Report or hanging out with Seth Green on the set of Robot Chicken. Each experience is paired with a non-profit, which ultimately receives 80% of proceeds from bids. The more bids you enter, the better the probability that your name will be picked, and you can also earn additional entries if you get friends to sign up. Then, the Omaze team picks the winners' names at random, ensuring fairness for everyone involved.

We spoke with Cummins and Pohlson about how they started the platform, how it "democratizes" the charity model and what trends they're seeing in the space.

Q&A With Omaze Co-Founders Ryan Cummins and Matt Pohlson

How did you come up with the concept of Omaze?

Ryan Cummins: Omaze really came about because of a problem we were looking to solve for ourselves. Our passion has always been using the power of stories to inspire action, specifically through directing and producing projects that were both entertaining and had a social message. Through our work, we felt that while we were creating a lot of awareness for our cause partners, we weren't creating the level of impact we knew was possible. We saw that this was pretty endemic to the cause content space as a whole, so we both decided to make a pretty radical shift and go to business school, so we could be exposed to new ways of thinking and hopefully invent a sustainable model to do what we are passionate about.

We like to say that the idea for Omaze was "inspired by Magic." While we were still in B-school, we went to a benefit that Magic Johnson hosted for the Boys & Girls Club of America, where he auctioned off the chance to sit with him courtside at a Lakers game and join him afterward for dinner. We are die-hard Lakers fans, and Magic was our childhood hero, so hanging with him for a night would literally be a dream come true. But, as a couple of broke grad students, we could only watch as the bids escalated until the experience ultimately cleared for $15,000. And that's where we saw another problem we could solve. The vast majority of charitable donations are coming from a small subset of the population. What if we made these same types of opportunities available online, and for a $5 or $10 donation, so everyone could have a chance at winning? We could help generate significantly more money and awareness for deserving causes, and all people could share the chance to live out dream experiences.

So we tested our initial concept during an LA Startup Weekend hackathon, where we finished in the top three. From there, we raised a seed round of capital from Andre Agassi and the Agassi Foundation, the founder of Warby Parker, global concert producer Kevin Wall, and a syndicate of Bay Area and New York investors. Our official beta launch took place in September 2012.

Why did you choose the name "Omaze"?

Matt Pohlson: We have a long-time friend who's as passionate as she is unconstrained by the English language, and for her these two traits often go hand-in-hand. So for years now, whenever she's shared an experience that is beyond amazing, she sort of lights up and describes it as "O"-mazing. When we were trying to come up with a name to describe the sort of company that offers life’s most incredible events, it just seemed like the perfect fit.

You've attracted some big names, celebrities and non-profits alike. How were you able to make these partnerships happen?

RC: We've been fortunate [enough] throughout our careers in the entertainment and non-profit spaces to have been involved in numerous high-profile charity campaigns, from roles as the first directors on the world’s largest global concert event, Live Earth, to serving as producers on Girl Rising, a documentary about educating girls in the developing world, to most recently acting as executive producers on the Clinton Foundation’s 10-year anniversary concert, Decade of Difference. These experiences have proven very helpful in giving us a unique window into the worlds of both celebrities and charities, and how best to develop not one but multiple approaches that complement each other to make Omaze work.

A lot of times we've been able to reach out to people we’ve worked with before. In other cases, our charity partners have a relationship with a high-profile supporter. And now that we've run a number of experience campaigns, we're in the great position of having a lot of celebrities and charities reaching out to us. In all cases, the common theme is that these celebrities, athletes and luminaries really want to leverage their reach to help the causes that they are passionate about, and we're honored that they see us as being able to help in that effort.

What are some of the most popular experiences Omaze has offered?

MP: Our top experiences include VIP set visits with Jon Stewart at The Daily Show, Stephen Colbert at The Colbert Report and the cast of Parks and Recreation; doing live sessions in the recording studio with bands such as Linkin Park and Moby; and our current experience offer to ride with Bryan Cranston in an RV to the premiere of Breaking Bad.

What kinds of trends in donations have you seen so far?

RC: We've seen our average donation value, average donation per experience and total donation grow dramatically — about 20% a month. With some of our most recent experiences, we've seen the average donation reach over $55 per person. And what’s beautiful about this model is that while we've seen individuals donate as high as $15,000 or more to support an experience, it is equally common to have winners that were only able to afford a single donation of $10.

When we launched, this was a completely new fundraising model, and as more and more supporters are hearing about it and seeing the experiences come to fruition, we expect to see these numbers continue to grow. We set an initial goal for our first year of raising $2 million in total funds for charity, and we're quickly approaching that.

How do you "track the impact over time" and show contributors how their donations make a real difference?

MP: When we launch each new experience campaign, we set clear goals with our charity partners for the funds we raise on their behalf. Given that we launched nine months ago, we are just starting to get to the point where we can see the work our early partners are doing with those funds start to materialize, and it's been an incredibly rewarding process.

From the 650 veterans that have been empowered through The Mission Continues and Team Rubicon to continue using their skills, to the more than 3,250 inner city students that have been offered the opportunity through charities like P.S. ARTS, The Young Storytellers Foundation and Urban Arts to receive arts education that would have otherwise been cut, it’s incredible to see the very beginning of what this model can achieve.

We are now working with our partners to create video content to share the stories of the individuals whose lives have been affected back with the community.

Another part of Omaze's mission is to create original content around each experience. How does that work?

RC: We are big believers in the power of story to inspire action, so we look to tell the stories of our charity and celebrity partners, as well as the stories of our winners having these once-in-a-lifetime experiences and what they learned along the way.

We've created videos about our charity partners that help explain the work they do and introduce the supporters they benefit — that way, we can help create a longer lasting connection to the cause. We've also done mini-docs of our winners who were able to live out their dreams of singing on stage on Broadway, or flying to Puerto Rico to meet Jennifer Lopez.

When possible, we like to get even more creative with content involving the celebrities to encourage higher participation from their fans. For instance, to help increase awareness around one of our current offers, "Ride with Bryan Cranston in an RV to the premiere of Breaking Bad," we kicked off the campaign with a Reddit AMA with Bryan Cranston, which was wildly popular. To build on that momentum, we filmed a thank you video, in which Bryan read his favorite comments from the Reddit community, which again was a huge success in helping raise significant donations. We're now preparing to follow that up with another video — "Bryan Cranston's Top 10 Reasons to Ride in the RV." We intend to do a lot more of this going forward.

How do you think Omaze compares to similar sites in the online charity auction space?

MP: The most clearcut difference between our model and those like Charitybuzz is that we've democratized the traditional auction-based model for celebrity experiences, enabling all fans with a chance to win by making micro-donations in support of a cause. So, whereas any online charity auction is limited to people who can afford to pay tens of thousands of dollars for these experiences, we've created an offering that is available to everyday people.

When we launched, this was a completely new concept for most people, but over the course of our growth, increasingly more celebrities, charities and supporters alike have recognized the power of Omaze’s fundraising platform to deliver impactful results.

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